Why You Need to QUIT Alcohol | Anxiety Recovery

Here’s a question I get asked a lot: “Can I drink alcohol when I have anxiety?” What I’m really getting asked here is “Can drinking alcohol perpetuate my anxiety and prevent me from recovering?” So, today, we’re going to discuss this question and dive into what effect alcohol has on your anxiety. 

For those of you who don’t know my story - my anxiety began in my early 20s. My friends and I stayed out late drinking at a brewery one night. The next morning, as I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, I suddenly began having panic attack after panic attack. I had no idea what was happening to me since I’d never experienced a panic attack like that before. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me – there were moments when I quite literally thought I was going to pass away. Well, that day changed the entire trajectory of my life. Because that day was the beginning of my downward spiral into nearly two years of debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. It was almost two years of complete torture and misery where my life became progressively more restricted. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without worrying about how my anxiety would affect me. I felt more alone and terrified than I had ever been in my entire life, and the reality is that it all started with a hangover after consuming too much alcohol.

I have many clients with similar stories, where their anxiety began after consuming alcohol. But honestly, it doesn’t matter how your anxiety started. That has zero bearing on why you have anxiety now and how you will recover. Instead, what I want to focus on today is how anxiety can contribute to alcohol can be a roadblock in your path to recovery. 

Alright, so here’s the thing – when you drink alcohol it can temporarily make you feel relaxed. This is why you might find yourself having a drink when you’re feeling anxious. You might have a couple of glasses of wine or a few beers and find that you feel a heck of a lot better for a bit. You don’t feel as anxious, your muscles aren’t as tense, and you aren’t nearly as worried about your anxiety. It can be really nice reprieve from anxiety. 

But here’s the problem. Alcohol may make you feel better in the moment, but alcohol has what is commonly referred to as the “rebound effect” in which the next day your anxiety actually feels even worse than normal. In other words, you can have more intense and frequent anxiety and panic attacks. 

There are three reasons that alcohol does this. The first reason is that alcohol dehydrates you. That’s a problem because your brain can misinterpret the physical sensations of dehydration as signs of a more serious problem, triggering anxiety. In other words, dehydration can create symptoms like dizziness and a racing heart, and these symptoms are very similar to those of anxiety. So, your brain can misinterpret them as signs of anxiety, which is just enough of a trigger to create more anxiety.

The second reason is that alcohol disrupts your sleep. While alcohol can help you fall asleep faster, it severely impacts the quality of your sleep, particularly your REM sleep. REM sleep is the deep, restorative sleep that your body needs to recharge and recover. And without enough REM sleep, you wake up tired and groggy. This fatigue not only makes you more likely to experience intense anxiety, but it also makes it more challenging to approach anxiety the right way. You feel worn down and tired, so it is more difficult to implement the Fearless Approach and respond to anxiety in the right way. 

Alright, the third alcohol affects the balance of chemicals in your brain, particularly those that regulate mood and stress. It also interferes with the production of serotonin, which is a critical neurotransmitter that helps regulate your mood.

These are three big downsides of alcohol, and when combined, they create the rebound effect. It’s called the rebound effect because you feel better when you are drinking alcohol but then rebound to the completely other side of the spectrum when you feel even worse the next day. It reminds me of a quote from Tim Ferriss, who said “Alcohol steals happiness from tomorrow.” Now, this is generally true with or without anxiety, but I think it’s incredibly applicable when it comes to the combination of alcohol and anxiety. In my own experience and my experience mentoring clients, the day after drinking alcohol is very likely going to be filled with much more intense anxiety. 

So, the bottom line is that your body doesn’t need the additional stress of recovering from alcohol as you’re simultaneously working to recover from anxiety. Instead, you need to give your nervous system the best chance to heal and desensitize - and the fewer unnecessary stressors you expose it to, the better. 

So, what do I recommend? I recommend avoiding alcohol completely until you notice significant improvements in your anxiety symptoms. That’s going to help keep you on the recovery path and not create unnecessary volatility in the recovery process. But I know there are likely going to be times when you crave a drink or you feel the pressure to have a drink in certain social situations. When that happens, try of the many non-alcoholic beers or wines on the market. Non-alcoholic drinks have actually come a long way in that they taste almost the same as the alcohol version. In fact, some of my clients find that having a non-alcoholic drink still helps produce some of the relaxing qualities of alcohol because it still sends the same cue to your brain that you're having a drink and it’s time to relax. 

The next question my clients tend to ask is, “Alright, well when can I start having alcohol again?” I recommend waiting several months into recovery before you start having any alcohol. I want you to be comfortably on the recovery path before you have a drink again. You’ll know when this is because you will have experienced a significant reduction in your anxiety symptoms. You’re anxiety simply isn’t nearly as intense or as frequent as it previously once - and most of all - you aren’t afraid of experiencing anxiety anymore. So, if you have a strong wave of anxiety, it doesn’t bother you. You calmly surrender to those sensations and simply allow it to pass. When you get to that point, you can begin having alcohol again. Don’t overconsume, of course, but at that point, you can feel free to have one to two drinks on occasion. 

To get to that point in recovery, you need a clear framework to follow. For that, I’ve provided the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the link below. It shows the steps that I take my clients through to get them a full recovery. These steps have taken clients from the darkest depths of anxiety back to a place where they are completely free of anxiety and all its sensations. So go ahead and check that out in the link below, it’s my gift to you for joining me here today.